Helping your Neighbor
"I ain't got no chance in the matter." He stopped on the ungracious sound of his words. "That aint like I
mean it. That ain't. I mean"-he stumbled "what I mean, if a fella's hungry-why, the first fella ain't got no choice."
66
"I'm learnin' one thing good," she said. "Learnin' it all a time, ever' day. If you're in trouble or hurt
or need-go to poor people. They're the only ones that'll help-the only ones." 513
"Or anybody. Use' ta be the fambly was fust. It ain't so now. It's anybody. Worse off we get,
the more we got to do." 606
"This ain't charity, an' you know it," Jessie raged. "We had all that out. They ain't no charity in this
here camp." 431
All of these quotes are situations where people are helping each other, or people acknowledge that they need to help
others. The whole way of life of the migrant is full of gracious charity to one's neighbors, but they don't call
it charity, they accept it as standard way of living. Helping you neighbor, while it can be argued that it is pure kindness
and moral responsibility, is an imperative of Marxism in that the unification and cooperation of the proletarian class is
evident.
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One Big Human Spirit
"Goes, 'Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their labor. For if they fall, the one will
lif' up his fellow, but woe to him that is alone when he falleth, for he hath not another to help him up.' That's part of
her." 570
"An' I got thinin', on'y it wasn't thinkin', it was deeper down than thinkin'. I got thinkin' how we was holy when
we was one thing, an' mankin' was holy when it was one thing. An' it on'y got unholy when one mis'able little fella
got the bit in his teeth an' run off his own way, kickin' an' draggin' and fightin'. Fella like that bust the holiness.
But when they'reall workin' togetherm not one fella for another fella, but one fellakind of harnessed to the whole shebang-that's
right, that's holy"
The Oversoul is present in the novel in these passages, and it send a kind of unified, pure, collective spirit through
the whole class. Everyone is in it for each other. The "two are better than one" approach comes into play in the
first excerpts, which are mainly from Ecclesiastes.
